Tyler Weaver's Blog, page 19

It is Mine

… and when this book is done, I will partake of each and every glorious morsel.

It is mine…

Stoneskip Shakeup / THE ART OF MEMOIR

This period of changing things up continues, the desire for time, optimized, as I face the reality of the incoming Christmas break and the inevitability of routine mangling.

Back to writing on the tiny laptop – think I just like the focus it affords and the option for less power consumption (though battery drops from 100% to 40% in milliseconds, it seems) as tiny heater kicks out the tropics at my feet while my upper half braves the backroom arctic; plus iA Writer in dark mode looks a hell of a lot better: not quite so blurry to these eyes aging 200 years before a live studio audience (thank you Gary Larson).

Almost done with Mary Karr's THE ART OF MEMOIR: an essential, no matter if you're writing a fiction or non-, the appeal of writing a novel with the "carnality" of the best memoirs. At Karr's recommendation, more additions to the to-read list (Nabokov, SPEAK, MEMORY / Mantel, GIVING UP THE GHOST / Conroy, STOP-TIME / among others) if not to the to-read stack, yet; the self-intervention continues.

And:

As I've rarely written rough drafts (stone-skip drafts, as I'm growing fond of calling them) before, I'm trying to figure out when said draft is done. Operating theory: when I'm repeating myself for at least a few days, when it ceases to flow and becomes more of a labored excavation, the surface filled with ripples and the fathoms below ready to steady them. Or I could just be in the dark night of the middle of the fucking thing and want to head back into the warm embrace of my revision safe zone. Sticking it out at least until next week, I think, to make sure that that's not the case. Then I'll reevaluate.

Listening: LOGHI, by Nymphalida.

Appearing Here This Morning Only Because the Discipline Demands It

Little office heater said that the Sanctum was 44ºF when I turned it on this morning. Currently, 64ºF. Go, little heater, go – warm my chilled heart.

Facing down the horror of having nothing to say this chilly morning; the blinking cursor mocks. Feeling that this could be the first time in this particular volume of 18,065 daily words that I throw my hands skyward and say fuck it, I've got nothing to share with myself, nothing about which to talk to myself – but here I am and here's this space and it's my job, in these 25 minutes, to fill it – for better or for worse.

Not to say that there aren't thoughts bandying about in my head, there are – why I don't read op-eds anymore (they all say the same thing and provide little informative value); why most of the music I listen to these days is ambient (because it's devoid of rhythm and words and sounds nice): they are thoughts, yes, but as yet lacking a life of their own – maybe I'm just not in the mood to explain anything, or maybe they're just not worth pontificating upon. I'll tell myself that's it.

But here I am and here's this space and here are words to sate the beast of the discipline. Eat up, beast, from this chipped fiestaware platter of exiguous table scraps. On with the day, then, as the blinking cursor mocks me – but at least I like its shade of blue. Pretty.

65ºF – no, 64º... 67º...A Morkie demands to venture outside.

Montaigne, “On Solitude”

Added another 25-minute block of reading to the day to make it through the tsundoku stack, up to two hours now. Spending a mere 25 minutes a day with Montaigne's COMPLETE ESSAYS; would gladly spend more, a lifetime, perhaps – might take that long. I'm good with it.

Writing this from my room, or my area, "at the back of the shop," as Montaigne says in "On Solitude"; my office is literally the old paint shop in the back of the house; in the back of the shop in the back of the house. Montaigne, amplified across the timespace of four-plus centuries (note: this wasn't by design but by necessity – KaijuDesk would only fit through one door, the door to the paint shop, so I built my office around the desk):

"We should set aside a room, just for ourselves, at the back of the shop, keeping it entirely free and establish there our true liberty, our principle solitude and asylum." – Montaigne, "On Solitude."

A sentiment echoed by Joseph Campbell in THE POWER OF MYTH:

"You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don't know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don't know who your friends are, you don't know what you owe anybody, you don't know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen." - Joseph Campbell, THE POWER OF MYTH.

In this space, sacred or asylum or otherwise, my own descent or ascent into acceptance of my basic solitude (10 years now, give or take):

"Often they think they have left their occupations behind when they have merely changed them. There is hardly less torment in running a family than there is in running a whole country." – Montaigne, "On Solitude."

And:

"... it is not enough to withdraw from the mob, not enough to go to another place: we have to withdraw from such attributes from the mob as are within us. It is our own self we have to isolate and take back into possession." – Montaigne, "On Solitude."

Working on that. First step is to accept that I have absorbed attributes of the mob, the hearts and likes – it's only then that I can begin the process of returning – if I was ever there – to a possession of self; this, without falling into the trap of self-centeredness and assholery. A challenge, a lifelong one, perhaps that, if nothing else, gives me something to write about.

Listening: LIVE IN KÖLN, FEBRUARY 23 1975, by Terry Riley and Don Cherry.

Tsundoku Intervention

Time is/might be nigh to declare a book-buying moratorium of indeterminate length – at least until I make something resembling headway through this tidal-stack (arrived yesterday: Sartre's BEING AND NOTHINGNESS (811p) / RUSSELL: THE BASIC WRITINGS OF BERTRAND RUSSELL (745p) / nevermind that I've been picking my way through Montaigne's complete ESSAYS for the last year or two); I'm all about the tsundoku, but this shit's gettting overwhelming.

Related: dumping more than a few online reading sources – including THE ECONOMIST (I've never had to write so many emails just to get their content delivered on a regular basis; I'm throwing my arms up in the air with a hearty fuck it and excorcising "reckoned" from my vocabulary); PARIS REVIEW fell to my lack of interest awhile back. Slow it down, quiet it down, pare it down; reduce redundancy. Miss my podcasts but can't find a suitable arctic-seasonal replacement for ideal listening time (mowing the lawn).

Speaking of which, what's going on with my favorite, SLEEPWALKERS? Are they part of WIRED (another one that's going to fall; I just don't care) now? Is it a second season or is WIRED just replaying the first? Stealing the name? Not accusing anyone of anything, but I'm confused – and looking forward to a second season, though only if it's by the same team as the first; I wish I had Oz's accent but this patented midwestern lack of accent will have to suffice.

Onwards into the book-stack. The day awaits.

Listening: OF DAWN AND OF ICE – EP, by Kammarheit and Phelios; AUTOIMAGINARY, by Natural Information Society and Bitchin Bajas.

Results of Thinking About the Things I've Thought About

Happy Monday. A typical Monday opener, the clearing again of the decks already cleared but maybe the final mopping, the shining (all work and no play...) – follow-ups and all of that. Great WATCHMEN last night; sad that next week is the final episode. Truly something special.

To answer myself from Saturday: want to turn comments on, but the whole system is odd here on Squarespace. Maybe use Disqus? Will require more figuring. Want to move fully to just posting here as my public digital self, with the newsletter my private digital self.

Finished Joseph Reagle's HACKING LIFE: SYSTEMATIZED LIVING AND ITS DISCONTENTS over the weekend, a history and examination of the life hacking culture. Thinking about writing about it but I'm still thinking about the book; given my life requirements for managing a chronic illness, have to strike a balance with systematized living out of necessity... Definitely worth a read.

Also confirming from Saturday: more frequent posting incoming. These morning posts remain a daily requirement; anything extra is a because-I-wanna. And I think I wanna.

Happy: Giant huggable plush Godzilla now living in my office. This is very important. Also: hooked on MY FRIEND PEDRO.

Will be spending time with WaPo’s Afghanistan Papers today. Pentagon Papers for the 21st century.

Listening: ASLEEP AND WELL HIDDEN, by Kammarheit; ANOMALIES, by proteu.

Things I'm Thinking About Doing Here but Probably Won't but It Doesn't Hurt to Think (Most of the Time)

Considering: allowing comments for the first time on any site of mine since 2012. On the fence, back and forth, to and fro. Open to suggestions, though it's not like I have a vehicle to respond to them or read them... Twitter, I guess. Definitely moving towards this one.

Considering: replacing weekly newsletter with daily emails of these pieces... not sure... this one springs to mind a lot and I invariably change my mind by the time it comes 'round to write the NL and fall in love with it all over again. Consideration, concluded, for now.

Related: do I post here on Sundays too? Maybe. Next two considerations might fill that perceived void. Option: Weekly dog picture returns. Also:

Considering: a second Informality in the evenings... or the afternoons... or maybe this is where things go... not sure... if there is another post, it wouldn't be an exercise, a have-to, like the Informalities; it'd be a want-to. Thought smaller updates / micro / nano would work here... but these postings are my status updates, my version of them, the form (yes, I believe status updates are a form – for better or for worse).

Considering: still want to find a good way to share music here. Related note: finally made the plunge to pairing my good headphones with the Watch. Kinda nifty, playing music from my wrist – though the UI leaves a lot to be desired (Steve Jobs would be shitting himself if he knew they called watchface apps "Complications"). Almost as nifty as turning on the Christmas tree from my wrist. Almost. (DEUS EX, here I am.)

All of this wandering boils down to a simple question of how can this site be of value to me and to those who visit? How can I better make it a space representative of me in each moment, day by day, an avatar, a platform, where I write and share and plant my raggedy flag on the plane of digital existence?

Smartplug (Under)Caffeination Lab Experiment

An attempt to switch out coffee for matcha this morning / my body is a lab experiment / which hasn’t gone so well. Writing this paragraph post-matcha on the phone as I wait for water to boil for coffee. I’ve made innumerable changes for my health; this will not be one of them. Deargod give me back my coffee.

I’ve found that I prefer my disconnected self or at least a more thoroughly policed connection; mindful, I suppose, though I hate that fucking word now.

Life, in contrast: bought a smart plug under the pretenses of not having to contort my body into all sorts of weird positions to — (Drip, Chemex, drip, with your sweet nectar of anxious life) — turn on the Christmas tree lights. Superentertainingfuntime on, off, from the Watch... I know I’m probably sending messages to the sleeper-robot apocalypse cell – and that the right on-off combination will, like the dude with the pen in GOLDENEYE, trigger Judgement Day or Sean Bean – but I don’t care. Buttons are always amusing. And now I have one on my proto-Pip Boy. Wasteland here I come.

And though I know I'm probably in for some wild mental gesticulations in the matcha/coffee ropeadope, I have coffee now and thus, you are all safe. It is so decreed – though maybe I will stick with just one cup of coffee henceforth.

Adrift in the Vaudevillian Now

Started work on the new thing and it's terrifying and wonderful, often in the same moment and it just feels right.

Thinking: Of the memories awash in media theory that constituted my days of writing the first book, COMICS FOR FILM, GAMES, AND ANIMATION (proud of the book, hate the title), one set stands apart: fandoms – fanBASEs. Recognition that we are now (more so than ever before) in the fanbase era of politics, that The Malignancy stokes those fires – indeed, thrives in the toxic flames of the worst of the lot in his scorched earth bastardization of representative governance –, that argument is no longer discourse but a means to demonstrate expertise and to never, ever be wrong – coins in the slot machines of a reactionary now..

For better or for worse, candidates that fail to recognize the unique fandom moment of this vaudevillian now are doomed — Harris being only the latest exceptionally qualified candidate – who had best be at the top of everyone's AG list to rid the department of the stain of Barr's blatant corruption in the post-Malignancy era – to fall to the abyss of dispassion and indifference.

Note that I realize that this realization of mine is probably one of those "no shit, Sherlock" moments but oh well — nor am I saying that fandom is a bad thing; it, like anything of value or of good, can be manipulated and weaponized towards the fulfillment of nefarious ends — this is where my thoughts are this morning and this is the time in which they are expunged, tick-tock (what a great episode of WATCHMEN on Sunday)... The day awaits.